David Ritcheson had been a running back on the Klein Collins High School football team. He was homecoming prince as a freshman and had a girlfriend. He "hung out with the good crowd," he says, and had every reason to look forward to returning last fall.

But once classes resumed, Ritcheson was overwhelmed by the looks he got everywhere he went — in the halls, in the cafeteria, in classrooms.

The looks all said the same thing: You're a victim, how do you deal with it? Everybody knew what had happened to him, and the attack, he says, "was just so degrading."

In a case that drew national attention, Ritcheson, a Mexican-American, was severely assaulted last April 23 by two youths while partying in Spring. One of the attackers, a skinhead named David Tuck, yelled ethnic slurs and kicked a pipe up his rectum, severely damaging his internal organs and leaving Ritcheson in the hospital for three months and eight days — almost all of it in critical care.

In an hour-long interview at his home with his parents on Monday, Ritcheson agreed to be photographed and have his name made public. He reflected on his life before the attack, described the lengthy recovery that followed and looked forward to wresting something positive from the experience.

"How hasn't it changed me?" he asked, summing up the experience.

Today, Ritcheson will be in Washington, D.C., to testify before a congressional committee about why he feels federal hate crime laws need to be expanded. As much as he doesn't want to be a "poster child," Ritcheson is convinced he can do some good.

Now 18, Ritcheson said he doesn't remember anything about the attack — not the punches, not the kicks to the head, not the 17 cigarette burns that still scar his body, not the bleach poured on his face and body and not the assault with a pipe taken from a patio umbrella.

He does remember riding a bus to school on April 21. He remembers taking a TAKS test. And then he remembers waking up with his arms strapped down, a tube in his throat, and feeling he was nearly blinded by bright lights above him.

"I thought I had gone crazy," he said. "I thought I was in an institution."

Court testimony and laboratory and law enforcement reports filled in some of the gaps. Tuck and Keith Turner met up with Ritcheson and his friend Gus Sons at a crawfish festival in Spring. They later all went to Sons' home.

The violence that followed was fueled by hard liquor, marijuana and Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug.

Tuck, 19, and Keith Turner, 18, both of Spring, eventually were convicted of aggravated sexual assault for attacking Ritcheson in the backyard. Tuck was given a life sentence, Turner 90 years.

Sons never called the police and didn't prevent the attack. Following the beating, Ritcheson lay in the backyard, naked, for hours until Sons' mother called police much later in the morning.

Gus Sons testified at both Tuck and Turner's trials. During a break in one, Sons apologized to Ritcheson. The two have had no contact since.

"He could have done more," said Ritcheson, "he could have done less."

Ritcheson and Sons had become friends about a month earlier at Highpoint North, an alternative school where Ritcheson said he had been sent for fighting, and a place, he said, he didn't fit in.

Ritcheson believes he met Tuck and Turner for the first time the night of the attack. But he'd heard of Tuck and knew he had a reputation for violence. He also sees what he had in common with Tuck and Turner — like him, they seemed to be in search of a good time.

Ritcheson said he deeply regrets letting himself get so inebriated that he failed to pick up on the brewing trouble, and that he was in no shape to defend himself or run away.

Both Tuck and Turner were filled with such hatred that they might have attacked somebody else as viciously, said Ritcheson, whose body bears the scars from their attempt to carve a swastika into his chest.

The FBI had no grounds to investigate the attack because it occurred in a private yard. Under federal law, perpetrators can be charged with a hate crime only if the event occurs in an area of public access.

Ritcheson will testify in support of a bill that would allow people to be charged with a hate crime even if the incident happens at a home or other private property.

The law is needed, he said, because there will be other, similar attacks.

News coverage, with its humiliating references to the "pipe assault victim," he said, "tested me morally."

"I shouldn't care what people think," he said. "But it's like everyone knows I'm 'the kid.' I don't want to be a standout because of what happened."

Ritcheson has declined psychological counseling, relying on his parents and friends. He copes with the past, he said, "by not thinking about it."

He knows the attack changed him fundamentally but says he has overcome the worst of it.